Chapter 343 - Robots!
Chapter 343: Robots!
Everything shook violently as countless numbers of rocks, along with seawater, came pouring in, instantly submerging this newly unearthed city.
Xia Fei held the wall with one hand for support as he stared at the now sealed door, which would determine his fate. Though the sea water alone was not enough to make Xia Fei yield, Xia Fei would be helpless against the deluge of sands and rocks which would come pouring in if it gave way.
Fortunately, the metal door made by the ancient civilization was very sturdy. This inconspicuous square building was as sturdy as an actual fortress. It merely shook along with the waves of sea water that had rushed in after the energy shield gave way, but the building soon returned to tranquility.
“That was close!” Phantom heaved a sigh as he clutched his heart. “A minute later and we would’ve been buried here deep underwater.”
Xia Fei was uneasy. “Though we’ve managed to keep our lives for now, all our potential exits have also been sealed after what just happened. Right now, we have but two choices: Either we find our own way out of this predicament or we wait for someone to come and rescue us.”
Phantom was speechless. It was easy to say ‘rescue’ on paper, but faced against the a hundred ton of sediments and rocks that they were now buried under, it would hardly be anything but easy even if the Adjudicator Union mobilized the most advanced underwater engineering ship. As for searching for a way out by themselves, that would all depend on luck.
Lifting his head, Xia Fei took in his surroundings. While it was true that they would have to consider how best they could get out, they must not forget that there were also others who had entered this building they were now in. He still had no idea what rank these people were, or whether they were even friends or foes.
There were plenty of rooms, and the corridors were all long and narrow.
Xia Fei exercised his Breath Control technique and began walking forward.
From the layout of the room, it seemed that they were in a common office for processing administrative work.
Xia Fei did not forget to collect the office materials from the ancient civilization even as he searched the place. If he truly managed to find a way out, the haul he got today would surely be worth exchanging plenty of good things.
There were plenty of rich people who would be proud to collect or use these trinkets of the ancient civilization. Only a fool would sell these items, since the greatest value of these priceless relics would be to exchange for equally precious objects, which Xia Fei would find more useful.
Once things like weapons and equipment reach a certain grade, they would no longer be within the scope of money, and it was much better to exchange for other items.
“Blood!” Xia Fei’s heart momentarily stopped beating as he squatted to inspect it.
He examined the drop of blood on that metal floor, and from the drip pattern, it looked as if this injured person was doing all he could to escape, which was why the oval drop of blood very clearly showed the direction this person was running toward.
He touched the trace of blood lightly with his finger and noted that it was slightly warm. It seemed that this had only happened not too long.
That was when a cleaning robot about forearm height appeared in the distance, diligently cleaning its way. It did not appear to be afraid of Xia Fei when it spotted him. It slowly rotated its two rubber wheels as it gingerly approached Xia Fei, cleaning up the blood on the ground.
“A robot! Why isn’t it attacking you?” Phantom wondered.
Legend told of the robots betraying humans, taking the extermination of the human race as its responsibility, yet this little robot here did not have even an inch of ill intent toward him.
Xia Fei picked it up with one hand and fiddled with its back for a bit.
“A half-AI model, able to execute orders from humans but lacking the components to give it sapience and sentience.”
Phantom nodded. The robots, which were said to have betrayed humans, were advanced models that had attained sapiency, and this was apparently valid. After all,this cleaning robot lacked any hint of ill intent; it was like an intricate robotic toy, except that it was still working even after so many years, going about its assigned duty. Xia Fei could not help but marvel at the technological development of the ancient civilization.
Xia Fei turned off its power source and threw it together with the other items he collected.
‘The Impaler doesn’t have anyone keeping the place clean and tidy. We can keep this little guy around as a cleaner,’ Xia Fei thought to himself.
Cleaning had always been a nightmare for men, and it was the same for Xia Fei. This was especially the case given how messy his ship’s interior had become after all the retrofitting, with plenty of nooks and crannies that made it difficult for a human to reach, which made this robot perfect for the job.
A robot that would work twenty-four seven, keeping the ship pristine, made for quite a pleasant living, and Xia Fei could not help but smile to himself thinking about this.
“This cleaning robot must’ve been mopping the trail of blood. All we have to do is follow the path it has taken and we will find the person who left this trail,” Phantom said somberly.
Xia Fei nodded. All of a sudden, he remembered something that he had missed, “The little robot! Little Furball!”
“Furball is still in my bosom! Given how long I’ve been diving, I wonder if it drowned!”
Xia Fei was so flustered that he broke into cold sweats. He hurriedly took the little creature out from his pocket—the thing no bigger than a chicken egg, with its body as soft as cotton. It was tucked in his chest and weighed close to nothing, which was why he had completely forgotten that he still had this small life on him!
All he saw was Furball snoring away in deep sleep as if the seawater had not affected it one bit.
Furball tossed to one side and burped a bit of seawater. Its little eyes flicked a glance at Xia Fei for a brief moment before it went back to sleep.
Xia Fei was speechless. It turned out that his pet was not even the least bit afraid of high pressure or the sea water. Even Xia Fei could hear his bones strain and creak under the immense water pressure, yet Furball was apparently unaffected by any of those things. He truly had no idea where it had learned its ability.
Placing Furball back into his bosom, Xia Fei carefully followed along the corridor as he made his way forward, using his surroundings to hide himself.
A series of screams and cries could be heard some distance away in front of him as if there were people in the middle of a fight.
“What! Could there have been more than four intruders?”
Xia Fei quickly took two steps forward and leaned in, taking a peek of the next room from behind a door.
Shock.
Extreme shock!
Xia Fei could not have imagined that he would actually come across robots that had betrayed humanity!
From their appearance, these robots that surrounded the humans were all AI security warbots, their two arms were sharpened like scalpels. Perhaps not even the sturdiest combat suit would be strong enough to stop these sharp weapons from penetrating through if he were to be struck by these weapons.
The four humans who were attacked by these warbots were trapped in a corner, their backs against one another. There was even a familiar face among the four; Clean Knife!
He was clutching onto that silver butterfly knife of his in a reverse grip, while holding onto an alloy steel plate, which was in the shape of a shield, in the other. There were many cut marks on that steel plate, which were probably the result of blocking the attacks from the enemy robots.
The other three people trapped with him were a pretty lady in her thirties, as well as two strong men with bronze-colored skin. One of the two suffered an injury in his left arm from being struck by the warbots’ weapon and had it bandaged for the moment, though it was still oozing blood.
The four were all using their special abilities, doing their best to fight off the dozens of warbots around them. Since they were all warbots, all of them had impressive defense; normal attacks, therefore, hardly poised a threat to them. Conversely, their attacks on the four humans were extremely effective, and their simple cold weapons, coupled with the advanced hydraulics transmission system, made every strike of theirs have devastating momentum.
*Bang!*
One of the muscular men got his chest pierced through by a warbot’s hand blade, as the impetus of that thrust pushed him back dozens of meters before crashing into a metal cabinet and creating that loud *bang*, deeply denting the cabinet as a result.
With a low grunt, the man’s two eyes rolled up and he died. The bones in his body most had probably shattered upon impact.
Clean Knife gritted his teeth as he shouted to the woman, “Sanniang, cover me!”
The woman nodded and pulled out a directional blasting grenade and tossed it out in front of her.
The grenade would explode in the direction thrown, so the user would not be injured from the blast, and it was considered a standard equipment for military special operations.
*BOOM!*
A blaze was instantly created!
The powerful explosion forced about seven or eight of those warbots dozens of meters back!
Clean Knife used this opportunity to unleash his Butterfly Ten-steps, dragging in the remaining warbots into his spatial plane.
About half of the seventeen to eighteen warbots present were taken away by Clean Knife, relieving the pressure on the woman and man quite a lot. They gathered their senses and put up a strong fight against the enemies left. The two humans managed to damage two of the warbots heavily after launching two sneak-attacks, causing them to lose their combat functions.
“What do we do?” Phantom asked.
Xia Fei flashed him a devious smirk. “We’ll of course be waiting for them to be done massacring one another, then clean up the mess after.”
Phantom chuckled darkly. “The oriole that lies in wait as the cicada hunts the mantis; no matter what they’ve found so far, everything will ultimately end up in your pockets. How diabolical. Truly diabolical.”
It was a good plan, but things did not go according to what Xia Fei planned.
This was not the only path that led to this room, and a robot happened to have appeared from the door right across Xia Fei’s. This robot was even smaller than the cleaning robot from before, appearing to be in the shape of a teardrop. It utilized magnetic levitation as a means of movement.
Its head drooped, looking to be upset with the scene in front of it.
The fight between the humans and the robots had attracted its attention. It paused for a moment before charging into the fray.
“Humans are in danger. Pod must protect the humans!”
“Stop! Robots can’t harm humans!”
Even the pair who was fighting against the warbots were dumbfounded, wondering to themselves, ‘Didn’t the robots rebel and betray the humans already?’
*Crash!*
The weak, little robot was obviously no match for the powerful warbots. One of them merely raised a single hand against the little robot and smacked it to the siden a dent instantly formed over its pretty and white outer shell.
The little robot Pod quickly climbed back up. “Baddies! You’re all bad robots! Pod definitely won’t let you harm these humans!”
The poor and weak, little robot did not have any combat capability to speak of, so all it could do was lower its head and try to headbutt the enemy with all its might.
*Crash!*
This one collision had quite a bit of strength behind it, and the warbot that it collided against staggered, losing its stability as it fell to the ground. Meanwhile, Pod was now sitting down on the ground, all groggy, stars appearing in its eyes to signify visually its dazed state.
The warbot got angry and glared at Pod as it thrust its handblade at it!
Its blade pierced through Pod’s chest and reappeared from its back!
*Shing!*
The warbot retracted its blade as sparks erupted from the wound on Pod’s chest, its green eyes slowly dimming.
It used its two hands to grab onto that warbot’s leg, even as its robotic voice called in a slowly decreasing volume. “Robots need to obey humans’ orders. Robots must protect humans from danger.”
*Smack!*
The warbot gave it a harsh slap, which sent Pod back down onto the ground!
It rolled several times before effortfully getting up again. It said in an adamant tone, “Humans are in danger; Pod must protect the humans at all cost!”
Xia Fei was stunned. He did not know what he should say to express the complex feelings in his heart. Was this a human or a mere robot?
*Crash!*
Pod had made another charge and got thrown to the ground by the warbot.
Seeing how this robot demonstrated an unbending spirit and tenacity never to give up, Xia Fei could not help but think of the explosive vitality that humans would feel when they were on the cusp of death.
“Protect humans! Robots must protect humans!” Pod’s voice was becoming weaker and weaker as its power slowly leaked away. The chest wound it sustained had damaged half of its power source.
Because the ones being hunted were humans, this little robot had staked its own life to protect them at all cost. Was it worth it?
*Crash!*
Pod was sent sprawling down onto the ground by a warbot again. It struggled for a good while before climbing back up.
It no longer had enough power to sustain its magnetic levitation, so it used its two arms to drag its body, still speaking in that weak voice. “Protect humans from danger. Pod must protect the humans. Protect… Protect…”
Phantom turned to Xia Fei, and it was clear from his eyes that he could no longer bear to continue watching this.
Xia Fei felt the same.
All of a sudden, Clean Knife’s spatial plane got shattered, and several warbot remains appeared lying on the ground. It looked as if he had managed to kill them all, though Clean Knife himself was also heavily injured. Blood was all over his face, and his cuff kept slipping off.
Xia Fei was unconcerned with him but was instead staring anxiously at the crawling Pod, muttering to himself ‘Fool! Don’t crawl your way over anymore!’
Pod’s persistence was heart palpitating, however. It kept repeating that line about protecting humans as it continued moving its two robotic arms forward to join in the battle.
“F*CK IT! I’M GONNA KILL THEM ALL!”
Xia Fei’s anger had finally exploded into rage!
Gripping his Celestial Moon, Xia Fei charged in with great fury!
“I can’t stand this, either; quickly kill them! Kill them all!” Phantom was equally enraged as he yelled hoarsely.
……
Soon, all that remained in that room were three humans and a single small robot.
Xia fei set Pod down on the ground and pulled out his toolkit from his spatial ring, ready to do some emergency repairs on the little robot. A short distance away, the woman who was called Sanniang and Clean Knife were supporting each other. They had both been heavily injured and had already lost any ability to fight.
Clean Knife was not a threat, and Xia Fei still had plenty to ask him, so he let him live for now, but right at this moment, he was urgently hoping to repair the little robot Pod as soon as possible.
Sanniang thought about it for a while before walking over to Xia Fei’s side. “Young man, thank you for saving us.”
As she said that, a sudden flash of silver passed, slicing right across her throat. Fresh scarlet blood as red as a blooming flower against a setting sun spurted out freely.
“You won’t have to thank me anymore,” Xia Fei coldly remarked.